Carl Laraman’s side, who lost 6-1 in the corresponding fixture last season, were impressive throughout and they took the lead just before half-time when Jack Jebb scored from the penalty spot. Victory was effectively secured in the 61st minute courtesy of Tarum Dawkins’ third goal of the season.

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5 comments

Ah, good stuff. Clean sheet is pretty impressive for a defence with two schoolboys and two who haven’t been getting many positive reports. Maybe Siemann’s better than some suggest, certainly looks a good passer from what I’ve seen

Any ideas if Mugabo is injured again? Been keeping an eye out this year but seems to have had little involvement after his return

Defensive coaching seems to get worse every year.
Poor positional sense, no coordination between the back line.
A lot of basic errors are made by U18 and U21 that they should not still be making.
Even when they recover their mistakes, most of the recoveries are due to athleticism rather than technique and judgement.
Arsenal Academy has not produced a single defender in the premiership since ages.
Even longer for a defender good enough for the first team.
Gibbs was a left winger, converted to left back very late. His conversion really happen in loan when U21 and in the first team.
IMHO, Bellerin is the only one with a shot at making it as a defender at Arsenal, but I see that he is not in the first XI any more at Watford. I am assuming that they judge him as great going forward, but a liability when defending. As Watford plays a 3-5-2, defending is easier, but more athleticism is required. That should suit him. That does reflect well on Arsenal defensive coaching.

From what I can see loan clubs are very reluctant to play loanees. As far as I can tell bellerin has had ONE bad game (the most recent one) and he was great defensively vs qpr (there’s a match compilation on YouTube if you check). The fact that yennaris, who failed to start a single game on loan, got a start on his debut while akpom was benched despite having spent more time there backs this (don’t get me wrong yennaris is great technically. Point was alluding more towards why not play akpom too). I’m not entirely sure why though there are a few obvious reasons.

I was recently in favour of loaning out zelalem but (call me fickle bcse you’re right!) we should do do something similar to chelsea and form a link with clubs abroad or just scrap it and ease them in via cc if they’ve got potential bcse at this rate a loan is pretty much a risk or gamble rather than an opportunity. The fact that the players have such a say on their loan destination while encouraging in some way also indicates the staff’s lack of confidence in what presents a better opportunity.